According to legal documents, Deen, Earl "Bubba" Hiers, and Paula Deen Enterprises have dropped their Savannah-based team led by Oliver Maner, saying their firm was "out of their depth." Instead, Deen and company have hired a new set of "World Class," "legal heavy hitters" from Morgan Lewis, as well as Harvey Weitz from Weiner, Sheahouse, Weitz, Greenberg & Shawe in Savannah.

The Savannah-based team recently tried to have the racial discrimination portion of the suit dropped from the racial and sexual harassment case, citing that plaintiff Lisa Jackson could not sue over racial discrimination because she herself was a white woman. (Ironically, this was the same rationale that the Supreme Court used to dismiss Prop 8).